


Father Figures

by verboseDescription



Series: Spiders And Friends [1]
Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Earth 14512, he's like her cousin who keeps finding himself with babysitting duty, i realize that tag is kind of misleading murdock is not her father, just a fic about a girl and her dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 20:30:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18213239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verboseDescription/pseuds/verboseDescription
Summary: "What would you do,” Peni says suddenly. “If you saw your dad again. Only, he didn’t know he was your dad. And he was living a whole life without you.”“Clones?” Daredevil asks hesitantly.“Different universes."Peni Parker goes home after the events of Spiderverse and thinks about her father.





	Father Figures

**Author's Note:**

> So, according to this very short interview, Peter is canonically, Peni's dad, and you can find them say that here:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peV8s83UMmw&feature=youtu.be  
> Also, according to the comics, Daredevil is a friend of Peni's dad. He's also picked her up from school, in full Daredevil costume. So I like to think that they hang out sometimes

When Peni finally gets back to her own world, she lands on top of a building. As she falls through the air, SP//dr’s remains tumbling around her and Peni desperately scrambles to keep all of them as close to her as possible. She can hear the comms beeping, but she’s not sure if she can find the right button to answer. And then she hears a thud of someone’s feet hitting the ground near her. Tears spring into her eyes as she realizes who it is.

Daredevil.

She’s never been so happy to see a man in shin guards. Her Spider’s just as happy as she is.

“I need help,” Peni tells him, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I got—I need to fix this.”

“Your Aunt’s been looking for you, girl,” Daredevil tells her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Where did you go?”

“There was a guy with a scorpion tail,” Peni sniffs. “Super low tech, but he got me good.”

“And where was this?” Daredevil asks.

“Somewhere far away,” Peni says. “I don’t think I can go back.”

She feels tired suddenly, and tugs at his sleeve. He picks her up. His shoulder pads are too spikey for him to lift her up like the Peter in black had, so instead he holds her close to his chest.

“Hey, May?” Daredevil says to his communicator. “Yeah, she’s fine, but we’re going to need pick up.”

 

It’s exactly 2:23 in the morning when Peni finally looks at a clock, which means she’s been gone all night. Even though days had passed in Miles’ dimension, she had been missing for about 9 hours. Cause for concern for sure, but this was nothing like the kind of panicked response Peni would have received if it really had been days.

They make Peni do a bunch of health tests, just to make sure she’s alright. When she’s done, Daredevil gives her a scented sticker that smells like strawberries. Peni thinks surviving dimensional travel is worthy of at marshmallow scent, and tells him this.

“Strawberries are healthier,” Daredevil tells her. He ruffles her hair. “You good?”

“I’m better,” Peni tells him. “Can we hang out tomorrow?”

“If your aunt and uncle are okay with it,” Daredevil says. 

“Not if you’re dressed like that,” Uncle Ben says. “She’s not like you.”

“I know,” Daredevil sighs. He turns towards the door, then turns back to Peni. “You’ll see me tomorrow.”

He says it like a fact and a promise. Peni immediately feels better. Daredevil doesn’t break promises. She knows because he’s keeping the promise he made to her dad, even now.

Daredevil runs off and Uncle Ben keeps a raised eyebrow near the door he left from.

Uncle Ben’s always been suspicious of Daredevil, but Peni thinks he’s one of the best people she’s ever known in all ten years of her young life. He had never asked her to do anything for him, and that alone made him a rare find.

Everyone was always asking Peni to do things. Get in the robot, Peni. Sacrifice all your free time to protect the city, Peni. Let this spider bite you, Peni.

But Daredevil was always nice to her. He offered to teach her how to box, and he was the only one of her dad’s friends that introduced themselves to her at his funeral. He hadn’t said much at the time, honestly. Just that he understood. He lost his daddy pretty early on too and sometimes, it still hurt.

It wasn’t a particularly nice thing to tell a nine-year-old, but when Peni heard him say it, she immediately knew they were kindred spirits. He was the only one who hadn’t told her things would get better. Peni already knew this wasn’t true. She had fought a giant robot earlier that day.

But he wasn’t going to lie to her because she was a kid. He knew that she was grown-up enough to be told that sometimes, things are just sad.

The next day, Peni sees a man in red glasses waiting for her at the school gates. It’s Daredevil. He hasn’t told Peni his actual name yet because he doesn’t want anyone to know who he is, but Peni thinks she could figure it out if she really tried. His idea of a disguise is just wearing a hat over his ridiculously red hair. But Peni wasn’t really concerned with who Daredevil “really” was. He’s Daredevil. That’s all he needs to be.

Peni tugs on his sleeve. He smiles at her, folds up his cane, and sticks out his hand for her to hold.

“I want to talk about my dad,” Peni tells him, taking the hand. They start walking, though neither has a destination in mind. “You said you had stories about him.”

“Sure do,” Daredevil says. “But why don’t you tell me a story first?”

Peni knows he’s asking about her disappearance, but she thinks if she starts talking about the other Peters she met, she’s going to cry. She doesn’t want Matt to think she’s a dumb baby.

“I met someone who said they were from 1993,” Peni tells him. “And that he was bitten by a magical spider that gave him powers.”

Daredevil stops walking for a second, then shakes his head.

“Yeah,” he says. “That tracks.”

“Also I met a spider that was bit by a radioactive pig,” Peni adds. “So now he’s a pig, too.”

Daredevil squints at her.

“Now it’s your turn,” Peni says.

“You know,” Daredevil says. “He never told me how your robot works. One time, he tried to convince Ock that your web fluid was made by little spiders that lived in the arms of the suit. The suit’s to protect _them,_ not me, he says. Can’t risk poisoning your villains with spider venom.”

Peni laughs at this. She’s sure, suddenly, that this is definitely something Peter B. would do and a sense of longing fills her.

“What would you do,” Peni says suddenly. “If you saw your dad again. Only, he didn’t know he was your dad. And he was living a whole life without you.”

“Clones?” Daredevil asks hesitantly.

“Different universes,” Peni tells him. She squeezes Daredevil’s hand. “They weren’t—I know they’re not _him,_ but. I want to go back. They were really nice, DD. I miss them.”

Daredevil’s quiet for a long time.

“Can’t SP//dr track energy signals?” he asks eventually. “You could reverse engineer it, but…”

“This is my home,” Peni tells him. “And they weren’t my dad. But I want to see my friends again. I just want to know they all made it back okay.”

Daredevil pulls out a sticker from his jacket pocket and hands it to Peni. It has a very encouraging cat on it and smells like lemons. Peni briefly lets go of his hand and sticks it on her elbow.

“You Parkers are wild, you know that?” Daredevil tells her. “If your dad was around, he’d probably be jumping at the chance to see another dimension. He’d be real stupid about it, too. That’s what I like about you, kid. You actually think to do a _test run._ But Peter? He’d just jump into anything. ‘A new experience,’ he’d say. What an idiot.”

He’s smiling as he says this.

“You miss him,” Peni says. She’s always had the sense that maybe he missed her dad more than she did. Her dad hadn’t spent a lot of time with her, honestly. Daredevil knew him better than she did. It was kind of sad. She thinks she knows the Peters she hung out with in Miles’ world better than the one in her own.

“He was so strong, Peni,” Daredevil tells her. “I still can’t believe what happened, sometimes. I don’t know if you get how powerful SP//dr is yet. I always thought he’d outlast all of us. There’s next to nothing that can pierce that hunk of metal, but, well, you know what happened. He didn’t get pierced, at least.”

Crushed to death was no way to go. Peni wonders sometimes, what his last thoughts were. She wonders if he blames himself for not making SP//dr stronger.

“There’s nothing like that robot your dad made,” Daredevil says. “People try and copy it, but they never get it right.”

“I know,” Peni says. “Everyone tells me that. They say my dad was a mechanical genius.”

“Yeah, a genius, sure,” he agrees. “But that was just one part of him. Maybe all the techies you work with see him as the guy who made a once in a lifetime machine, but I don’t. To me, he’s the guy who said he felt lonely talking to regular AIs. A couple of years after I met him as SP//dr, he told me that he made your spider because he thought it seemed rude to create an intelligent being just to make them drive your car. He was just a weird guy who liked spiders. The longer I got to know him, the more I was sure that he never expected any of this.”

Spider’s crawling around in her back. Peni’s used to the feeling, but the more Daredevil keeps talking, the more it feels like she’s got spiders crawling around her stomach, too.

This is a different side of her father than she’s used to seeing. It feels kind of like meeting Spider-Man for the first time. They all had her father’s face, but never his voice. Peni thinks that seeing the Peter Parker Daredevil knew would be the same. None of them were the man she knew. They weren’t the guy who only said goodbye to her by saying “See you soon, baboon,” because he knew how much joy she got out of finding different ways to respond to it. Peni remembers being a kid, like, _really_ little and shouting back triumphantly, “Out the door, dinosaur!”

“I don’t know if he ever wanted to be a hero,” Daredevil says. “He just knew he made something with a lot of power, so he had the responsibility of finding the right way to use it.”

“With great responsibility,” Peni says. Aunt May’s always saying stuff like that. She has mixed feelings about it.

“Do you eat ice cream?” Daredevil asks her. “I know you’re a vegetarian, but I don’t know if you do dairy. I mean, I know there’s a froyo place nearby, too, but it’s up to you.”

“I only eat good ice cream,” Peni informs him. It makes him laugh. She wants to know what he’d do if he had gotten sucked through the portal instead of her. She wonders if he’d be mad at them, because they weren’t him. She wonders if he’d be sad, because they were.

Peni doesn’t have to ask May what she’d do if she saw Peter again. The answer’s simple—she’d hug him tight, and never let go.

Peni never got a hug from the older Peter. She hadn’t really cared at the time.

“It’s your turn again,” Daredevil says as he leads her inside an ice cream shop. “What happened to you, kid?”

“Someone was trying to bring people into his universe,” Peni says. “His family, I think. He wanted to find a replacement, but he reached too far. He was going to bring down his whole world just to see them again.”

“Well, that’s fu—uh, rude,” Daredevil says. Peni snorts. Yes. The Kingpen is _very_ rude. Someone should put him in time out.

“There was some kind of accident when he first tested his machine,” Peni continues. “It drew a bunch of us to that New York. There was five of us. I met a girl who got bitten by a spider. And then I met two grown ups who got bit too. Their names were Peter Parker.”

Daredevil winces.

“There was a pig named Peter Porker, too,” Peni adds. Daredevil looks like he very much wants the multiverse to stop being a thing.

“You should probably tell May all this,” he says.

“I will,” Peni promises. May will know exactly what to say to make her feel better, but she doesn’t want to feel better right now. She wants to talk about her dad.

“Do you think it’s bad that I want to see them again?” Peni asks. “Us meeting almost destroyed the universe. I shouldn’t risk it.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did,” Daredevil says. They get to the front of the line and Peni orders bubble gum ice cream topped with chocolate syrup and gummy bears, then reads off the flavors for Daredevil. He gets a matcha flavored one. Peni thinks he’s kind of weird, but she doesn’t hold it against him. “Want to see them, I mean. You deserve to have some friends.”

“I have friends,” Peni says. She doesn’t. They both know it. What she has is her aunt and uncle and their team.

“Okay,” Daredevil says. “But you also deserve to have friends you actually like.”

He pays for their ice creams and they go find a bench outside.

“Maybe we were only friends because it was life or death,” Peni says. “Maybe they won’t like me if I come back.”

“I can’t imagine a reality where Peter Parker isn’t the nicest nerd you’ll ever meet,” Daredevil says. “So at least you have that in common.”

Peni shoves him lightly.

“If that’s not enough, just introduce them to me,” Daredevil tells her. His attempt to look threatening is totally ruined by his desire not to spill his ice cream. “Your dad told me to protect you, and that includes saving you from his jerky alternate selves.”

“You can’t beat up my dad!” Peni exclaims. Daredevil raises an eyebrow under his glasses. Peni giggles. “Thanks, DD.”

“You can call me Matt,” Daredevil says carefully. “Just as long as you don’t go blabbing.”

“I’m not a blabber!” Peni insists.

“I know,” Matt says. He’s smiling at her. “I trust you. Us superheroes got to stick together, you know?”

“Sure,” Peni says. She’s fully aware that she’s one of three out of the many heroes in the city that he’ll actually work with.

“That goes for your new friends, too. Don’t let them forget it.”  

 

Peni tells Aunt May about the spiderverse while they go find SP//dr’s blueprints. Luckily, even though no one knew exactly how to make a robot like her dad, there were people who knew how to fix it.

“I don’t get why time passed differently though,” Peni says.

Aunt May calls it dimensional plasticity. The world, she reasons, wants to put your back to where you belong. It stands to reason it wants to put you back _when_ you belong too.

“Might cause some trouble on the other side of things,” she adds thoughtfully. “If no time passed for us, you’ve got to wonder how much one of our day’s would be for your friends.”

“We could try and sync up?” Peni suggests. “Find a way to account for dimensional time discrepancies.”

“If you gave your friends some kind of goober, it might be able to act as a sort of homing beacon,” May suggests. “Even if some time’s passed on your first jump, you might be able to get on the same general time zone.”

“That’s a lot of goobers to test out,” Peni says.

“You in a rush?” May asks her. “Besides, you still have this guy to fix up first. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

Peni nods. First SP//dr, then the spiders.

“Do you think my dad would do this, too?” Peni asks. Aunt May shakes her head. She has that smile she always has when she talks about Peni’s dad.

“Your father would love to see another universe,” she tells Peni. “He’d probably try and bring back a souvenir. Or—oh, good lord—he’s bring back a pet. Something you’d never be able to find in our world. But then of course, he’d feel bad. So he’d bring it back home in and give a very tearful goodbye.”

“And then what?”

“What do you think?” Aunt May asks, leaning down to smile at Peni. “And then he saves the words. Every last one of them.”

Aunt May ruffles Peni’s hair, then smooths it back to its normal shape.

“But you don’t need to do that,” Aunt May says. “You’re ten. If you want, the multiverse can be your playground.”

“But only after I rebuild SP//dr,” Peni says.

“After we rebuild SP//dr,” Aunt May agrees.

 

 

 

 

 

Later, when Peni finally gets her goobers working, she goes Peter Porker’s dimension where she spends the entire day with him. It’s strange getting used to her body in it’s new form as a cartoon cat, but if that was the only way to avoid glitching, so be it.

When she finally has to leave, Porker says, “See ya soon, raccoon!”

“Time to go, buffalo!” Peni screams gleefully, climbing back into her mecha.

She thinks, maybe, she is exactly where she’s supposed to be.

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a random headcanon, but I think Peni's Matt is the only one who actually likes scratch and sniff stickers. All the other Matts think it gives stickers a weird extra smell, but cool, future Matt (I call him spikey, he has so many spikes i love him) thinks regular stickers smell weird. Also, he totally carries around stickers because he doesn't know how to deal with kids. He promised Peter that he'd help make sure Peni doesnt get into stupid hero shit, but he doesn't know how to get kids to LIKE him, holy shit. He eventually gets into the habit of giving Peni a sticker every time she seems sad or she does something cool, so when he inevitably meets Noir he just pretty automatically slaps a sticker on his jacket.  
> Also, the see you soon baboon thing was because I had a roommate who really liked saying different versions of see you later alligator. It's really cute. I think it's a fun trait to give a character


End file.
